


so sick of your crooked smile and your counterfeit soul

by derogatory



Category: Warchild Series - Karin Lowachee
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV First Person, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 18:59:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4757357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/derogatory/pseuds/derogatory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>four times Estienne wasn't like Falcone and one time he was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so sick of your crooked smile and your counterfeit soul

i.  
The pod lights blink back at you slowly.

You pull your knees to your chest and watch them, because if you close your eyes, you'll only see explosions behind them. You didn't understand what the blasts meant, but other kids started crying, so you cried too. Now you have to wait. Maybe there were other pods, ones with Mama on it. They'll show up soon and and she'll pick you up and dry your face. 

But you've been waiting a while; the lights have started to flicker out.

The older kids are fighting because somebody ate all the food, and the pod isn't big enough that you can avoid it. Your cousin Jean elbows you in the nose and you shout, curl up under the console to cry again.

The systems halt with a silence so loud it startles everyone quiet. Nobody knows what it means, and they argue again, but softer, more scared.

After a while, it starts to feel hard to catch your breath. Maybe it's from all the crying. Eventually the older kids all fall asleep, so you try and sleep too, because they'd be awake and fighting if that sound meant something bad, right? 

Maybe time passes. Nobody fights anymore, or talks. 

It's getting colder. The bulkhead wall stings when your cheek touches it and there's no hum under your fingers. But patches underneath the console's wiring still feel warm, so you stay there until the captain finds you. The pod docks with a scrape and a crunch.

"Estienne," he reads off your tags, mouth curving wrongly over parts of the word. You know how he should've said it, but he sounds so confident that you aren't sure if you remember it right. "That's a big name for somebody so small."

You nod because that's probably true.

"Do you know what a coffin is?" You don't nod that time. "It's where EarthHub used to put dead people. That's where you were." You don't understand, because it was a pod you were in, not whatever he's talking about. 

He picks you up into his arms.

The ship is called the _Khan_ and the captain laughs at you when you can't pronounce the rest of the name. The other kids aren't on his ship, or you don't see them. Jean is there, but he doesn't act like he remembers you. The captain says it's because the pod lost oxygen. 

He rests his hand low on your back. 

"You're very lucky," the captain whispers. Jean looks sick; he's trying to make words with his mouth but nothing is coming out. When you hide your face against the captain's neck, he pulls you close and takes you away.

Sometimes he holds your hand, which is nice, but sometimes he holds it too tight, which isn't as nice. He does other things that don't seem nice, but you know there are worse things. Or he tells you so. You almost never cry, and when you do he wipes your face with his big hands, or digs his fingers into your cheeks until they ache.

There are a lot of worse things. He tells you to close your eyes, and now behind them it's just black space, no explosions.

He never asks you about your ship and the longer time goes on, you probably miss it less. At first, thinking about Mama and Father used to feel like explosions in your chest, the one you saw when everyone in the pod cried. But that fades too. Now when you remember their faces, it feels like the console wires bunched together, warm and twisted up inside. It fades the more time passes. Jean goes away, too.

But that's for the best. After all, the captain says the past is a weakness, and that everything that's worth having is in front of you. You think that's probably true. He knows a lot more than you do. He says lots of stuff that seem smart, and sometimes he asks you to say them back. When you mess up the words, sometimes he laughs, and other times he doesn't look happy. He wants to teach you new things, and you want to be good at them. But then he asks what you think and you don't know, or you can't follow what he's telling you. 

He's mad you don't know how to read.

"Your family must not have loved you very much," the captain says when you struggle with a book he's assigned. "They didn't teach you anything." 

That doesn't feel true, because you know some songs, or maybe you did once. It's hard to remember the time before the captain.

"They didn't care enough to call someone to save your pod." He smiles these mean ways sometimes, when he's had a couple glasses of something that makes your lips pucker. "They threw you away."

You work harder to read. You work harder at everything the captain tells you to do, but he still says mean things. He yells a lot more than your father did. But you're learning to forget those people that forgot you, that left you to float alone after the strits attacked. The _Khan_ is your Family now, he tells you so and it makes your stomach feel full and warm.

The captain says you're not as smart as somebody else, and even if you don't ask who, he hits you for it. 

Slowly, you improve, and you clutch this new Family close. You remember the chill of the metal under your fingers, the deep space freeze of abandonment, and you will get better for him.

  


* * *

  


ii.  
We're looking for more merchant ships. Falcone says supplies are low, and with the Hub preoccupied beyond the Rim, it's an opportune time. We take advantage of opportunities, and when I was younger, I thought I would help him take what we needed in that way. Instead, he sets up another arrangement. 

Opportunism is, after all, a merchant trait at its core. It's not something solely Falcone's, as much as he espouses it to the _Khan_. So alongside that opportunism, he builds his own system. It's pieced together from his experiences beyond his military training, focusing on the gaps in their formal learning. His family was war bred but well-versed in the alternatives. I think at the time his his old family must've wanted him to be more prepared for potential threats. Instead, he left them behind and built up the greatest possible threat to that existing system. Then he assigned it to me, for me, his new Family. He doesn't give ownership to me with words and I won't claim it outloud. But late into the night we discuss it, his hands tracing along my skin, and we both understand the link between us in this new home. The role Falcone's crafted for me has his fingerprints all over it. 

The other pirates aren't completely on board with his new methods, but some are learning, easing into it with some attractive persuasion. I don't need to be convinced; I'd rather wrap my hands around the knives he's given me, the bodies he's pointed me towards, than pursue some vague outside agenda separate from the captain. 

So we are looking for merchant ships, for supplies and other things. Merchant ships have kids on them. There were kids in the shipyards we've hit, too, kids on Chaos and Austro, and other waystations between us and the Dragons. 

Kids like you, the captain says and watches me from the corner of his eye when the topic comes up. He's waiting for a reaction that isn't coming. Kids are simply smaller adults; they can do all the same things, just slower, and with smaller hands. Age is irrelevant, people get too caught up in those arbitrary delineations. Marcus might've taught me that; it sounds as smart as he is. He's waiting for me to fight him about the kids and their uses, but it's true. I was useful on this ship then, and I'm useful now, and wherever he needs new tiny hands and quick learners, that's just another job of mine.

And although Cal says _protege_ like it's his new favorite curse word, we both know Falcone is ready to add that role to our list of necessities, those needs beyond basic supplies. Additionals like: Piotr needs more help in the engine room. Someone needs to help prep meals. Protege. I mark it twice on the slate. It's urgent. The captain's moods shift quickly.

"Do you want to know if I ever considered you?" Marcus asks over dinner, in the middle of a discussion of protege and their criteria. "I would want to know, if I was in your position," he adds, amiably.

I run my thumb along the edge of the silverware in my grip.

Hestia is newer on the _Khan_ but quicker with words than I am. Even with ten years here I still need to learn, and parts of me are still stubborn against teachers who aren't the captain. I'm not clever enough to have the right response yet, but I know the wrong ones.

He doesn't really want me to ask, to make a shy inquiry about what could've been if he'd picked me to be his protege. Because then he will be honest, which for him means cruel, and I understand deep down Marcus doesn't enjoy being cruel to the things he loves. For him, that kind of brutality is always with a purpose, to teach me something, and I don't think I need a lesson that will bruise.

He's watching me with eyes that say I will get that sort of lesson soon if I don't answer him soon.

"If you did and I became a captain, would I have to leave you?" I know how his system works, but it comes out like a question. He likes questions. The captain nods, reaching for his glass. "I wouldn't want to be away from you for long."

It's not really an answer and he chides me for it, but eventually shifts the conversation elsewhere. 

If I was away I'd never be able to see it up close. Watching him speak, I want to say it again, that I could never be away from him, from this. But I know he doesn't like being interrupted.

I could've told him that it didn't matter, but that would've been a wrong answer, and a worse lesson. After all, Falcone inevitably chooses where I'll be, so whether or not I'd been considered wouldn't have changed the outcome. It's a pointless thing to know since my position on this ship is immutable, as it's always been. I don't change the captain's mind any more than utensils in a person's hands direct what they're about to eat. You use tools to get what you want and discard the ones that won't work. You obtain something new if its inadequate.

That's why we have to find him a protege, because I'm inadequate. But he doesn't discard me as long as I have a use somewhere else, in the Hanamachi. I'll be here, in the house he built for me, close to him, so intimately near that I would never complain. He doesn't like pointless whining.

I know what my sister would've done if he posed the same question to her. You will rearrange me in your life like furniture, at your whims, to what suits you, Hestia would say. For me it is the wrong answer, but for her it would be right. She's educated me on this difference between us Geisha, her cheek swollen and chin high. She says she is the one who has to fight Falcone a little or he'll grow bored of her, she'll be thrown away.

He's shown me how to kill, to slip knives into hearts and minds with words. But never how to twist the wrong words from my mouth and watch distaste cloud behind his eyes. He didn't teach me how and not even with the threat of being discarded can Hestia teach me. So we learn what people do and don't want to hear with the understanding that my role at home is much more narrow.

"A protege's loyalty must be absolute," Marcus continues, his excitement narrowing into a point. He likes when I watch him, open, sincere, and happy, and he likes to tease me for my affection. "You're very loyal. Are you sure you don't want to know if you were considered?"

I rest my napkin on the plate, stand, and cross the room to him. He kicks his chair from the table and I settle over his body, lacing my hands behind his neck. Like he's taught me.

I smile. "What are you considering for me now?"

  


* * *

  


iii.  
The children of a Hanamachi can never be compared. We each have our individual strengths, an expertise we can pass onto the junior members. We slide between those roles as a unit, each exchangeable member capable of relaying their training and specialties until the client is satisfied. Falcone is careful when he selects who we entertain because he is certain he knows which role is best suited to which client. He usually gets it right.

Even if they're not comparable, I measure Yuri's training against the others. He is quieter than Jonny but not as silent as Rika. He has questions like Yasmin, but he's never so direct; he doesn't have the vocabulary she did, the experience on the stations. On his worst days, childish and stubborn, Yuri can be difficult, but he is never as bad as Ville was. 

Marcus saw a gap in our expertise, the potential seduction in music. Hestia and I lacked musical training and Yasmin could manipulate it but not create. Ville was a musician, and after his family signed him over he was gradually told of his wider role. He took to it as ill-tempered as he did to most things. My role requires me to work with all the kids Marcus brings on, but even I had my limits with his poor temper. 

Falcone nearly dumped Ville on some station, or worse, until I told him how the boy looked at Rika. The captain didn't see it as the weakness I did, noting that it's good when children get attached. 

He stared at me long enough I knew he could see my silent disagreement. It would be impossible to hide something from Marcus, even if I wanted to. 

True to form, Falcone is right where I was mistaken, as he always is, eventually. Ville stayed with us and adjusted, and either stopped complaining or I went deaf to it. Connections between the Geisha became more mainstream, and I allowed myself to accept them. Bonds between the Geisha hadn't mattered for a long time, when there was only room in my heart for the person I belonged to.

"You're just jealous," Falcone would tease with his hands too tight, like when I was a child. "You always get so jealous," he would sneer and I'd strain my thoughts trying to remember when, but agree.

I didn't mind it when it was Yuri. There wasn't any jealousy in me for the way a child clings and relies on someone older. I used to watch him and wonder if this was how Marcus saw me when I was younger. It was a way to feel closer to the captain at first, to see my role in another's, and, with a dizzying headrush, to place myself in a position like Falcone's. I was inadequate and I belonged to him, but there was a handful of a child that adored me, that belonged to Marcus as I did. But for a short time Yuri could be mine too.

Geisha training changed this. It wasn't playing pretend with a giddy child any more. 

Yuri is like the others with his questions, but he presses on things I never had to explain before. He lingers on subtle details related to intimacy. I feed him worried half-truths and they slam open hatches in my memories, revealing every bloodied end with a client. My memories of humiliation open wide like an airlock, venting every unsavory detail of this false life from me. I can't tell him those things, even if they're the things he needs to know most of all. 

He looks at me and wants what I have, from my lips to my body to the falsehoods of this arrangement Falcone has crafted for me. 

I dodge Falcone's impatience for his upcoming debut. 

We have to push the debut back, I tell the captain. Yuri isn't ready. Yuri still has too many questions. Yuri still trusts me to have all the answers for things don't have the words for. Yuri is enthusiastic to know everything about manipulating and submitting to another person's desires, and it's begun to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Even if I can't say these things, Marcus knows. He disagrees, so I press forward with his training without complaint. The captain knows and mocks me for it-- jealous. It would be impossible to hide something from Falcone.

Yuri stares through his lashes at me, powerful with the knowledge I've given him. 

His button mouth hangs open there and I lean down and kiss it for myself, while I still have it.

  


* * *

  


iv.  
Yuri's tired of this argument, but he won't shut it down. He could, he's outranked me since he debuted, a captain of his own ship now, but he won't. Maybe that means he's growing up and I'm just becoming the brat he was. All sullen looks and too many questions after being left behind.

My fingers twist in the absence of a knife. 

"Why not?" I ask him in the captain's suite on Slavepoint. I press on his poor moods. They're softer targets than the things I usually plunge my blade into. "What's wrong with this one?"

Yuri shoots me a warning look for my tone. I'm almost proud. "He's too old," he says.

"No, he's twelve. There's still lots of time. Besides, little kids are a pain." My eyes flick up from the boy's profile on my slate. The fingerband lights, tossing shadows over his cheekbones. "Like you were."

Another warning look, but it lacks its earlier edge.

"He's not protege material," Yuri says, firmly. 

We go back and forth for a few more minutes, about the opportunities Yuri could give him, the benefits to a protege. He fights me because he's comfortable in it, in teasing back and forth even if I know Yuri's serious when he refuses. It's a silly thing to be stubborn about. Maybe he's not completely grown up.

"I just wish you had someone you could talk to," I sigh when the banter has more tension than play. 

"I talk to you," Yuri counters quietly, taking a seat on the bed beside me. The sheets are disheveled, still warm from our earlier body heat and friction. That has always been one way to convince Yuri of difficult things, but this topic has hit more brick walls than breakthroughs. 

"Not me. Someone you can trust," I correct him and kiss him before he can argue. He should've stopped trusting me the moment he debuted, when he saw what Falcone needed from him and what I wouldn't prepare him for. Falcone's lessons are all brutality, their purposes thinner as the years go by. I can't bring myself to do it, and I hurt him worse than the captain ever has.

And there were optics in the suite that picked up my mutinous words. I knew there were, but I went ahead and said them anyway because Yuri needed it, needed me. My knees dig into the mattress, planted on either side of his thighs.

It's impossible to belong to two people at once, although I'd thought it possible a long time ago, hoped it. It's false, it's a weakness. I'm focusing myself in the past, when Yuri was only mine. Like the captain said, there is nothing for me in the past, everything lies ahead of me. In a future with the military at our heels and Falcone's mistakes on our hands. I know what lies ahead of us, and the sooner Yuri finds someone new to love, something unspoiled from this marred future, the sooner we can all move forward. 

Falcone's not happy with it. My job is to report on everything Yuri tells me, push him towards getting a protege, but not at the expense of the captain's eyes, my eyes. Falcone doesn't give warnings, he makes statements. He leaves messages on me for shift weeks until I can see Yuri again and deliver them, purple and puffy.

We should be working, or reminiscing, but he's holed up in the suite's bathroom the next time we're together at Slavepoint, running knives under his skin and calling it deserved.

"We don't have time for this," I say against the hatch, but it's too thick for my words to bleed through to Yuri. I say them for someone else's benefit, recorded evidence of my commitment.

I know I belong to Falcone, and Yuri hasn't been mine in years. There is no sliver of privacy between us, no future in this arrangement between a protege and an inadequate thing. If I can't give Falcone what he needs from Yuri, he'll discard me, and if I chip away at my relationship with this boy, I could lose it completely. There is nothing for me in the past, and nothing in the future. He hasn't grown up and I haven't become a child, we're both just staggering listless in space, drifting between the spots Falcone has positioned for us. He has carved ourselves a corner of space that is rapidly deteriorating.

Yuri won't let me bandage his arms when he's through, won't let me touch him at all for some time. 

He sits at the edge of the bed and looks anywhere but the bruises on my skin. I call him back to me and ply at him with gentle words like a child, but Yuri shrugs me off. I'm losing my meaning even in that.

  


* * *

  


v.  
It's much larger than the pod, but the death of _Genghis Khan_ 's engines doesn't wake you up. Instead it's long after when you slowly come to, blinking to adjust to the dark. This is wrong, it's not your quarters. You never bring the lights down all the way because you almost never sleep alone. 

The dark clears into stiff, stale surroundings, a burnt metal and copper stench hanging in the still air. You bring your hand to your face and it comes back crusted and red. Maiko red. 

It's comfortable to stay down, head against the cool floor and remember that debut, the formality behind what had already been done to you for years. It was a new system, untested, and you were young enough to seem equally untested. Falcone was nervous, which meant he was angry at you for putting him in this position, even if this plan was one of his own design.

You kissed his palms that wanted to hit you and said it would be fine. What happens on the ship is between our Family, it has no bearing out there, with other people and their base desires. 

He dug his fingers into the bones of your shoulders and said he loved you and if you screwed him over he would give your body to the crew. Don't make me look foolish, don't ruin this investment, don't forget that you belong to me.

He was young and nervous about the deal and you told yourself it was for you.

You stay down and remember this. Because if you look up, you'll see the ruined Hanamachi that Falcone built for you, for himself. And the mess of cloth and blood in the corner that must be Hestia. 

You keep waiting to cry. Tears might've been something else you lost over these years, years that gifted you with much more valuable things. The ability to cry for yourself isn't something to mourn, just like your parents' abandonment wasn't worth mourning. They couldn't think of you even in the moments before death, when they wouldn't radio help for you and the other children. You were on your own in those moments, drifting listless through space, couched with the dead bodies of other children. It was a coffin. You were alone from the moment you died in the pod, and you'll be alone when you die with his ship. 

The _Khan_ has been attacked in the past, in the decades you were onboard. Geisha remain in the Hanamachi, they guard the home that he built you, but as a child, you were usually with Marcus when it happened. 

Wait for me, Falcone would order, hands on your shoulders, pressure on your hips. He would leave and you would stay bolted there, affixed to the spot with invisible wires. You belong to him. 

Falcone's ship is dying and you will die with it, like he will or already has, and that grounds you more than the pain.

There were voices when the fires still burned, when the ship wasn't breaking down like it is now. There were rescue crews, there must have been. _Kublai Khan_ is the support ship in the event of disaster. But it's been long enough the fires are out, and the ship is silent. Yuri walked these crumbling halls and thought the better of pulling you free. Being a child or an adult has no bearing on being abandoned.

You don't have the ability to cry for yourself. It's another form of fighting you weren't taught.

Easing yourself up on one arm, you keep your neck steady. Every movement is precise because one wrong turn sends you back to the floor in agony. Balanced and steady, like dancing and in the silence there's a quiet music.

Your fingers scrape against the cold bulkhead and lights from the wall flicker back at you uncertainly. They're familiar in the same way being lost is, and you smile at them over the corpses and the cold that couches your steps. You trace them to the remaining pods, icy but still responsive under your bloodied hands.

You were not a protege or even a particularly smart student. But you know what the captain would have done in your place, and you stop waiting.


End file.
